As incessant rains struck Chennai once again on Tuesday night and have continued since, several parts of the city are inundated throwing normal life out of gear.
With several services and transportation taking a hit and people stranded in their houses or outside, social media users from other cities including those from other cities like Bengaluru, Kolkata and Mumbai are offering phone recharges to those in need of call balance.
Some of them even requested Prime Minister and mobile operators to slash calling rates until the rains stop.
Bengaluru-based techie Prasanna Bharathwaj, one of the people who offered to rechage phones of people stranded in Chennai, said, "Within half an hour, I got top-up request from 4 people from Chennai. I recharged for Rs 30 each."
The least i can i do is recharge some phone numbers. Let me know. #ChennaiRainsHelp
— juni (@juneymb) December 1, 2015
Send me your phone numbers if you are stranded in #chennairains and out of balance. I ll recharge it for you#chennairains
— Naga Bala Krishnan (@anbknaga) December 1, 2015
Taking mobile phone recharge requests for those stranded. #chennairains. I can spare Rs 2000 for it. Please spread the word.
— Rincewind (@milcom_) December 1, 2015Vivek Krishna, who hails from Chennai and is currently based-out of Philadelphia, USA, goes by the Twitter handle @milcom_ put out the above tweet on Tuesday. "I wanted to help those stranded in whatever way I could and found people offering to do recharge on Twitter and it seemed like the quickest way to help out. Also, with credit on their mobile phones, the victims would be able to reach out and coordinate with relief efforts too. I did a recharge of Rs100 each," he told The News Minute.
He added, "The thought that some might misuse the opportunity did cross my mind, but this didn’t seem like a time to make judgements. Out of the 7 I did, even if one of them was genuine, the satisfaction of having helped is priceless for me."
Gowtham Kumar, who is stranded in Chennai and approached Vivek for a recharge, said that he was unable to reach out to his family as his balance was running low. "I wasn't able to recharge online because there was no internet. My family expected me to update them every few hours and soon I ran out of charge. Within 20 minutes of responding to his tweet, the person recharged my phone," he said.
@narendramodi @PMOIndia @rsprasad Make all phone calls in chennai toll free till #Chennairains are over. Recharge taking lot of time.
— Valmiki (@valmikii) December 1, 2015
Any1 stranded in Chennai wanting a phone recharge,pls feel free2 ping me..I will do it for u,that is all I can do frm Kolkata #chennairains
— Mohona Gupta (@MohonaGupta00) December 1, 2015
Guys, If anyone out there needs a recharge to be done, Pls ping me. I can do it. #chennairainshelp @RJ_Balaji @Actor_Siddharth
— Abishek Murali (@abbyabishek) December 2, 2015
Any guys who suffering due to rain if u need help like online booking/recharge 9620788854 #ChennaiRainsHelp #chennairains #ChennaiFloods
— Prasanna Bharathwaj (@Bharathwajspb) December 2, 2015